


The Intricacies of Building Etiquette (or, How Stiles Charmed the Pants Off The Next-Door Neighbor)

by blackbyrd



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Human, Christmas Decorations, Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski are Neighbors, Everyone is Adulting, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Having a good apartment is key yall, Laura Hale & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, M/M, Meddling Laura Hale, Mistletoe, Scott McCall is a Ray of Sunshine, Stiles Stilinski is a pancake maker extraordinaire, coffee love, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 19:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12895311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackbyrd/pseuds/blackbyrd
Summary: Stiles finally moves into a good apartment building, and really, it's the best: insulated windows, a spanking new coffee maker (courtesy of Lydia Martin), and quite possibly the hottest neighbor he's ever had. The only downside is the six-floor walk up, except his Christmas-obsessed landlord starts decorating six weeks early and the mistletoe starts multiplying, and maybe he can make a move on his hunk of a neighbor after all.“So, yeah. Building etiquette. How does that work?”





	The Intricacies of Building Etiquette (or, How Stiles Charmed the Pants Off The Next-Door Neighbor)

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up being a lot longer than expected.  
> Also, the Meredith thing was supposed to be a one-time nod, but I ended up with more Meredith mentions than both Lydia and Scott. So, there's that.
> 
> This is my (first) official entry for 12 Days of Sterek! I hope you enjoy it. It's not perfectly polished and it probably needs some good beta-ing/re-writing, but I lovedddd writing it!! So leave some kudos or comment below if you thought 'hey this was nice', or if you thought 'ugh here's a list of complaints', or if you just wanna say hi.  
> However, as per my usual preference, I think I'll go back to writing tragic-and-bloody now. I need to wash off all this fluff.
> 
> Merry Christmas!

When Stiles first moved out, he didn’t really plan things through. It wasn’t like there was any rush: if anything, Stiles regretted ever letting his father out of his sight, because he was one hundred percent sure that Noah Stilinski would be having curly fries for breakfast every day of the week if left unattended, despite his father’s own claims that he was an adult and, therefore, knew how to take care of himself. Moving into the city had been a necessity, and one that had proven expensive, which in turn explained why Stiles had spent over four years moving from one crammed, run-down apartment, into the next. Most of them had humidity problems and one small, rusty window that creaked when the wind blew or just failed to keep it out of the apartment altogether.

That was why, as soon as he’d signed his brand new, decently paid, full-time contract with the university, he was already texting Lydia to aid in the apartment hunting.

They’d found him a nice one-bedroom apartment close to campus, a six-floor walk-up that somehow didn’t cost a fortune, which Stiles was convinced had been a miracle after so much of his adult life spent in studios as big as his childhood bedroom. For the first time, he could say he had a view, though at this point that really only meant that he could actually see something other than a brick wall and a fire escape ladder, and from _three separate windows_ , which was a big step up, even if they were either facing the equally tall building across the street or the alley between his apartment building and the next, where some questionable-looking characters made frequent apparitions at odd hours of the night. Lydia had, of course, refused to help with the move-in, but she’d stopped by earlier that morning with coffee for him and Scott, and three boxes which Stiles had never seen before. She’d also brought Jackson along to carry them up to the apartment. Jackson, as usual, looked less than pleased with the chore, but he’d learned to tolerate Stiles and ignore his borderline obsessive fondness for Lydia, and he was a lot less prone to burst into spontaneous, quasi-threatening rants these days. Stiles liked to attribute that to his charming personality and dashing good looks, but it was more likely due to their recent engagement and Stiles’ growing preference for the same gender.

Not that he didn’t still think Lydia was the most beautiful, intelligent, fascinating person he’d ever met. But after a near life-long obsession with females in general and his strawberry-blond Goddess in particular, Stiles had finally given the Kinsey scale a spare glance and wouldn’t you know it, sexuality was fluid and Stiles’s was a gushing river of boys, girls, and everything in between.

“Lyds, I know you know I adore you and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be questioning your actions,” says Stiles, as they follow Jackson up the stairs. Scott had just missed them for a few of minutes, having left in his secondhand, family-friendly minivan to collect the last of Stiles’ stuff from the old place. “But I also know that’s not my stuff and I thought we’d agreed, no gifts.”

Lydia, who is walking to steps ahead of him, stops in her tracks and turns around. She’s got one of those Lydia Martin trademarked looks on her face: this one says he’s stupid and she shouldn’t have to spell this out for him, anyway. He knows she will, though. Stiles, through years of secret pining and also quite a few years of just plain, honest friendship, is pretty sure that’s just one of the many strange ways in which Lydia shows affection, because she could choose to ignore him like she does most people who she gives the look to anyway, but that could just be wishful thinking on his part.

“Stiles, this is the first time you’ve gotten yourself a decent looking place, where I might actually consider visiting you, and I refuse to have it look like an undergrad student’s apartment,” she deadpans. Stiles almost misses the way she almost smiles when she says it. “Besides, it’s not like I actually went out of my way to get any of this, it’s mostly things I had lying around anyway.”

Their eye contact lasts for a second longer than it needs to, and Stiles immediately recognizes the lie. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is as sickly sweet and loving as Lydia Martin will get, unless someone she loves clearly and absolutely needs to hear some truths, or unless she’s just plain drunk, which doesn’t happen all that often anymore. Stiles doesn’t hug her because she’s already bounding up the stairs, but he smiles broadly, and tries to embarrass her further with a loud “Awww, Lyds!”

It obviously doesn’t work, because she looks perfectly collected and even disapproving of his childish tone, but when she rolls her eyes it’s with more fondness than frustration, and she cracks a small smile anyway, which complete negates whatever point she had been trying to make.

Besides, as soon as she’s out, Stiles rummages through the boxes and he immediately knows she had _absolutely none_ of those things lying around, especially when he recognizes the state-of-the-art coffee maker he’d been eyeing last Christmas, when he’d been forced to help her shop for gifts. And yes, he’d practically drooled over the damn thing. Stiles is an adult now, okay, he gets to lust after appliances. He’s pretty sure that’s a legal requirement of adulting, anyway, probably, because whenever he does it in public, his friends actually nod understandingly instead of how they used to nod in response to his rants, which was with an almost offensive amount of skepticism and mostly in an effort to shut him up.

Scott arrives no more than a couple of minutes later, shooting him an abbreviated text to open the door. Stiles skips down the stairs, and realizes this walk-up might soon become a nuisance, and then a problem, and possibly the bane of either his or his calves’ existence.

They finish setting up the most important corners of his apartment before the sun is setting. There’s a bed for sleeping, a work desk complete with a standard IKEA bookshelf, so Stiles can start working as soon as humanly possible, and a spotless chrome coffee-maker plugged in and ready to go, already filled to the brim with strong-smelling coffee beans. Stiles, feeling like a proud mother showing off her baby, offers his best friend a cup, but all it takes is a whiff of the beans for Scott to decline. Scott’s never been one for coffee anyway.

 “You know what would be great, though?” Scott says, his smile genuinely joyful, with that dreamy look he sometimes gets on his face that makes it looks like a Disney character, or a puppy, or a puppy in a Disney film. Finally, he declares: “Pancakes.”

Well, the kitchen comes with a stove, and since they managed the move in just under two days, the vast majority of Stiles’ food survived the journey, so he sets out to accomplish the very important task of making celebratory pancakes. He finds three eggs on the fridge, an unlikely vial of vanilla extract, and just enough sugar to make it happen. Scott is trailing behind him as he moves around the kitchen, checking every cupboard, even the ones which are still empty.

“Yeah buddy, I don’t think the pancakes are gonna happen,” he admits, a little reluctantly. “I can’t find any flour.”

Scott, for his part, looks as devastated as a sad Disney character, or a sad puppy, or a sad puppy in a Disney film. It’s the kind of stuff that makes your heart break a little, and he gets this way over absolute betrayal or missing the Christmas specials on TV, which makes him a very difficult person to let down.

Which is why Stiles is currently striding across the hallway outside his door, intent on knocking on his front neighbor’s door and demanding two cups of self-rising flour so his best friend can stop looking so sad. In all honesty, Scott is already grinning at the renewed hope of pancakes, which makes Stiles feel a little bit like a desperate parent trying to appease his manipulative, too-adorable-for-his-own-good, overgrown child, but the thought only occurs to him as his knuckles _tap-tap-tap_ against the door, and it’s too late to back out now anyway.

The door swings open to reveal a tall, black-haired, hunk of a man, and wow, _this was not what_ _Stiles had been expecting_. Not that he’d been expecting anything, really, because he hadn’t thought about it, what with all the thinking about Scott’s manipulative puppy eyes, and maybe he should’ve thought about it because he’s really not prepared.

Stiles ends up staring at his neighbor as the seconds stretch around them, watching horrified as his expression shifts from benevolently expectant to confused and skeptical. His neighbor has very pretty green eyes, he notices.

“Can I… help you?” The black-haired, green-eyed, very-attractive, probably-considering-calling-the-police-on-him neighbor says. Apart from the almost imperceptible hesitation, he is perfectly polite.

And really, it’s only been like three seconds, and Stiles is clearly building this up in his head, so he shakes it off and stretches out his hand.

“Yes, hi. I’m Stiles, I just moved in across the hall from you,” he says, stumbling a little over his words. Then, because he can’t help it, he adds: “Sorry, I got trapped in a bit of interior monologuing there.”

Against all odds, the man seems amused by that particular sentence, though he does still appear mostly confused. Still, he takes Stiles’ hand and gives it a small shake.

“Derek,” the man, _Derek_ , says in response. “Are you making the rounds then?”

“Huh?”

Derek, his new very-good-looking neighbor Derek, does not roll his eyes at Stiles’s failure to keep up with the small talk, which is indeed no small feat. And honestly, Stiles doesn’t usually get this sidetracked by beautiful people – it’s just that he usually needs a moment to breathe in and out and get his game on, you know. He doesn’t just expect sharp, stubbly jawlines to pop up from behind every door he knocks on.

“You know, introducing yourself around the building? You said you’d just moved in, so I assumed.” Derek shrugs, and looks very cool doing so.

“Oh huh, yes. I mean, no. Oh, shit, am I late to do that? Scotty and I have been trying to finish getting it set up all day, I didn’t even think about… I’ve just never had an apartment in a nice building like this, you know? Mostly I’ve been avoiding my neighbors for years now, to be honest.” The words rush out of his mouth faster than he can think about them, and Derek is giving him a very concerned look. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve been living on the street or anything. Not that I think any less of homeless people, because most of them just had it rough, you know, it’s not like they wanted to be homeless or anything. I’ve just been through a lot of really small places and they really like to cram those in big buildings. Which is weird, right? I mean, why not just make a nice, decently-sized apartment, instead of a bunch of windowless sardine cans with bad plumbing, you know?”

Stiles halts, suddenly realizing he’s just rambling aimlessly and he’s probably looking like a huge idiot by now. Derek, for his part, looks amused, though whether that’s because he’s genuinely enjoying this, or because he plans to laugh about it with his friends later on, is a mystery to Stiles.

“So, yeah. Building etiquette. How does _that_ work?” Stiles concludes, albeit a bit more hesitantly.

“I’m pretty sure you’re off the hook until the end of the week,” says, Derek. “If I were you, I’d start with Meredith. She’s a little weird, but that kind of stuff really matters to her. Don’t tell her you came to me first, though.”

“Right,” Stiles nods. “Meredith. Which one is she, by the way?”

“She lives on 3A.”

Stiles is already planning how to approach this person. Maybe he’ll come over with some pancakes, or is it best to just say hi and bring the pancakes over later? Either way, he needs to fit the pancakes into the plan somehow, because he’s pretty sure his pancakes can win anyone over, even weird people who really care about building etiquette.

“So… is that it?”

“Huh? Oh, right,” he remembers. “I was wondering if you had any flour?”

Derek looks like he wants to laugh, but he reigns it in. Really, it’s a shame that his first encounter with this very cute neighbor is going so horribly, but at least Derek will get a fun story to share with his friends and family, possibly coworkers and any acquaintance he might make from now on, and Stiles is nothing, if not an entertainer.

At least he hasn’t offended the man yet.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Derek says, and disappears into the apartment leaving the door ajar.

Normally Stiles would follow, regardless of the lack of invitation, but considering their awkward meeting, and the fact that he’d already asking for favors on his first day on the building, he settles for peering through the small crack. He sees nothing but a white wall, and then a Derek walking toward him.

“Here you go. You can have whatever’s left there, I don’t use it much,” Derek offers.

“Oh, huh. Thanks, man.”

Now that he’s got the bag of flour, Stiles doesn’t know what to do exactly. Derek is holding the door like he’s just waiting for this whole thing to be over, so he can go inside and laugh. Stiles has already thanked him, and Scott is waiting, but he also kind of wants to stay out here in the hallway and stare at Derek and possibly try to flirt with him, because _Stiles has game_ , okay, he probably just misplaced it in the move or something.

Instead, he says, “It was nice meeting you.”

“Yeah, it definitely was… interesting,” Derek finishes.

 _Yikes_ , Stiles thinks, but he also says it aloud at the same time, complete with a dramatic rise of his eyebrows and a comically traumatized look on his face.

Derek actually chuckles at that. “Don’t worry, that wasn’t so bad. I’m sure my sister will _love_ meeting you.”

It’s a very weird thing to say, all things considered, but at this point Stiles is in no position to judge. It’s not like he can ask Derek about it anyway, because the man promptly disappears into his apartment and shuts the door behind him. Stiles is left feeling equal parts confused and embarrassed, but both of those have been more or less constant in his life since middle school, so he shrugs it off and heads back inside.

He makes delicious pancakes and Scott proclaims him the best friend of all best friends, and a pancake maker extraordinaire.

 

 

The only reason the move had been a matter of a few days was Lydia Martin. She’d taken over the whole thing, and while the arrangement had suited Stiles just fine, it had left him in the uncomfortable position of never having met his landlord until his third week on the building.

(He had, however, brought Meredith the leftover pancakes on the morning after the whole Derek fiasco. She’d been suspicious of him and Stiles was sure she knew, somehow, of his encounter with his front door neighbor, but the pancakes had been deemed sufficient for a peace offering.)

Stiles is on his third cup of delicious homemade coffee when someone knocks on his front door. It’s two in the afternoon on a Sunday and Stiles is buried in paperwork, because he’s the new guy, and the new guy always draws the short straw, so he gladly welcomes the distraction. He opens the door to reveal a young woman with long brown hair and a big, toothy grin.

“Hi! You must be Stiles,” she chirps.

“Yeap, that’s me. And you…”

“Laura. It’s great to finally meet you!” Laura offers her hand for Stiles to shake, which he does, even though he has no idea who she is.

“Do you… live in the building?” Stiles questions. He thought he’d gotten to know everyone, but maybe he’d missed a door he thought had been empty, or maybe she was new too, which would’ve been even better, because they could totally bond over how great those insulated windows were now that the weather was turning cold.

“Oh, heck no,” Laura says, scrunching her face. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great building, but I’m not really a big city girl, or an apartment girl for that matter. I actually came by to check up on you, see how you’re settling in, make sure you’re not dealing drugs out of my apartment, you know, the usual.”

Laura winks one of her big, warm green eyes at him and walks inside without waiting for an invitation, beginning to look around. Stiles closes the door behind her and follows as his brain finally catches up. He does notice that Laura purposely doesn’t touch the messy pile of papers and books and loose notes on his desk and all around it, and doesn’t judge the stack of dishes he’s building on the kitchen sink. It’s not that old anyway, and he was going to get to it as soon as he finished working, but it does make him like her a little better.

“Oh, so you’re Mrs. Hale?”

Laura, currently eyeing his chock-full bookcase, shudders. “Ugh, no. That would be my mom, who is your landlord on paper, but I do all the legwork for her. The paperwork too, I guess,” she points out. “Oldest child, you know how that goes.”

“I’m an only child, actually, so I kind of don’t,” Stiles notes. Laura stops in her tracks and turns to him.

“You are a very, very lucky person, Stiles,” she declares, her face frozen in a serious look, as though she’s reliving a life’s worth of fraternal-induced trauma, and Stiles wonders just _how many_ brothers or sisters Laura has, because it takes her a few seconds to snap out of it. “Anyway, my job here was to make sure you weren’t a criminal, and you certainly don’t look like one. Sleep-deprived, yes, and in need of doing some serious cleaning, but I think you’re going to be fine.”

Stiles chuckles. “Yeap, that about covers it. Speaking of which, I can get you a cup of coffee, if you’d like. It’s _really good_ coffee.”

“That’s very tempting Stiles,” Laura teases, “but I’m not an enabler and I’m sure you’d just use that as an excuse to get some more for you.” Then, she sticks out her tongue, and Stiles adores her already.

“How dare you,” he mutters, managing to sound deeply offended for a second, before they both laugh.

“Anyway, I should get going. Still have to drop by Derek’s before I can head home.”

“Derek?” Stiles says and _definitely does not yelp_. “As in, next-door-neighbor Derek?”

“Yeap, that’s the one,” Laura replies. “You know him?”

“Yeah, we’ve met,” Stiles blurts out. He is suddenly very glad that he’s never been the kind of person who blushes easily. Laura narrows her eyes at him, seemingly convinced that Stiles is hiding something, which he isn’t, except he maybe has a small, teeny tiny crush on his neighbor, but this is his acting-landlady, who definitely doesn’t need to and probably shouldn’t know about that.

Still, he thinks Laura does know, somehow, because she smirks, a mischievous glint in her eye even as she’s closing the door behind her. Stiles gets back to his work, and it takes another coffee cup before he can properly focus again. Maybe Laura was right. He should’ve just taken a nap instead.

 

 

It’s only fair to reveal that the pancake incident wasn’t the only time Stiles had seen Derek. In fact, they’d run into each other only a few days after that, and then every morning since. It turned out that Derek was an early morning jogger, baffling Stiles, who barely manages to untangle himself from his sheets and boil a cup of coffee before 7 am, which is a colossal improvement from his teenage years, when 12 am was still early morning. So, on his first day going to work, Stiles had run into Derek, dressed in basketball shorts and a very tight t-shirt, and it just happened to be very good incentive to not be late.

That first day, they’d exchanged quick “good mornings” and endured one very long, very awkward walk down six flights of stairs, complete with occasional bumping against each other. But the very next morning, Stiles decided to greet Derek as if they were friends instead of two people who happened to leave their apartments at the exact same time, and Derek had kind of smiled in response, and it sort of became a thing.

That’s how Stiles has come to know the following things:

Derek is all caught up on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which he refuses to download from the Internet because big scale fights are no fun to watch on a tiny flat screen. Derek reads modernist poetry and non-fictional history books, and is very obsessed with the early twentieth century in general. Derek has two sisters, both of which are either married or engaged and keep trying to set him up with everyone they know – Stiles notices he doesn’t specify girls or boys, and maybe reads a little too much into it, but hey, academia is killing is love life, and a guy can dream.

In return, Stiles offers tales of Coach Finstock’s frankly disturbing antics during lacrosse practice, very colorful commentary on every superhero movie ever made, and he even tells Derek about his dad, whose capacity to lead a healthy lifestyle he continues to question.

“Didn’t I hear you say you’re on an average of three to four cups of coffee a day?” Derek prods.

Stiles doesn’t dignify his clear attempt at changing the subject with a verbal answer, but he does narrow his eyes menacingly. Derek smirks, like he’s won something, which he definitely hasn’t, unless that something is a trophy for people who haven’t won this argument, in which case, he has. Either way, the quick morning banter becomes part of their routine, and it’s not like Stiles is about to complain. Everyone likes a little eye candy in the morning, and Derek turns out to be an above-decent guy. He’s kind of nice, even. Neat. Cool. _Groovy._

So maybe the crush situation has only gotten worse.

 

 

The Crush™ is the main topic of conversation when Scott comes over the next week. Derek had been in the process of retrieving his mail from the lobby when Stiles had buzzed his best friend into the building, which had somehow lead to Scott introducing himself and telling Derek about his job at the Animal Shelter and his engagement to Allison and his life in general, all in six flights of steps.

“Dude, your neighbor is super nice,” says Scott, as soon as Stiles opens the door. Stiles immediately pulls Scott into the room and shuts the door behind him.

When he tells his best friend about The Crush™, all he gets in response is a lot of _awwws_ and definitely not enough sympathetic commiseration.

“He’s really good looking, actually.”

“I’m painfully aware, Scott,” Stiles groans.

“Hey, maybe it’ll work out,” Scott gushes. “Then me and Allison could totally invite you guys over, or we could all go out for dinner. You guys could be our couple friend!”

Stiles doesn’t mention how Lydia and Jackson kind of already are their couple friend, because he knows Scott means well, but he does tell his best friend to hold his freaking horses, and give him at least the chance to figure out Derek’s last name before he marries them off, just in case he’s distantly related to Greenberg or anything equally disturbing. Then they play _Red Dead Redemption_ for three hours.

“Have you tried bringing him pancakes?” Scott suggests. “I’m pretty sure he would fall in love with you if he had your pancakes. You make awesome pancakes.”

Later that day, Stiles doesn’t take the leftover pancakes to the door across from his, but he does offer them to Meredith instead. She smiles widely, in a way that is almost creepy, and says he’s her second favorite person on the building now.

 

 

It’s Thursday and Stiles is running late for work. He stayed up all night, reading through dozens of uninspired papers on the same three or four subjects, and wondering if he had also been that unchallenging on his first year of college. Stiles had fallen asleep on the desk instead of his soft mattress, surrounded by fluffy pillows and burrowed in blankets, and he’d woken up cold and sore, his alarm ringing all the way in the bedroom for the fifth time that morning. Somehow, he was out the door in five minutes.

Outside, Derek stood leaning against the bannister, looking almost worried.

“Are you… waiting for me?”

Derek shrugs noncommittally, but Stiles _knows_ the answer is yes, so he grins widely. He’s already late, but he can’t pass up the chance for some flirty banter before work, so he takes his time walking down the stairs with Derek, as he normally would. He’s halfway through recounting the story of his famed paper on the history of male circumcision – well, at least, famed among his high school teachers –, because Stiles doesn’t know exactly where the line between flirting and blabbering on aimlessly lies, when Derek opens the door to the street.

And it’s absolutely freezing.

Stiles didn’t even think to look outside – the weather has been holding up nicely, and just yesterday he’d joked with a girl from work about how global heating really came in handy when you were too lazy to dress in layers – and overnight, September has turned a cooling breeze into icy gushing wind, and here is Stiles, standing in his jeans and t-shirt like a moron. Derek, who clearly has his life together, is wearing a hoodie over his running clothes.

“You okay, Stiles?”

“Yeah, no… just… afraid I’ll freeze my balls off, is all.” Stiles is pretty sure he can survive it, though. He just needs to run to the campus, because then he’ll be inside the lab and he can just adjust the AC and never leave again, and definitely not walk home, at night, in a flimsy t-shirt. _Stupid insulated windows_ , he thinks. At least the shitty studios he used to live in never fooled him about the weather.

Derek is already shrugging off his jacket.

“No, dude, what are you doing?”

“It’s fine,” he assures Stiles. “I always come home after my run, so it’s not like I’ll be freezing all day. Unless you really enjoy pneumonia.”

“Yeah, okay, fine,” he grumbles, taking the hoodie from Derek, who was already starting to give him judgy eyebrows. He immediately zips it all the way up. “That actually happened to Finstock once, you know.”

“What?”

“He lost his left nut, running around naked in the preserve. At least, he claimed to.”

Derek seems unable to decide whether to laugh or grimace, so he settles for a long, baffled silence.

“Your hometown sounds crazy and that man probably needs psychiatric help,” he finally declares.

“Yeap and yeap,” Stiles agrees.

There’s really nothing to add, and they suddenly find themselves staring straight at each other, both smiling in amusement, a comfortable silence lingering between them. In a couple of minutes, Stiles will realize how quiet his brain was in that moment, and _wow, isn’t that something_ , but right now all he can think is how nice, just incredibly and fundamentally and overwhelmingly _nice_ Derek is.

“Right, I should get going,” he finally says.

“Right,” Derek echoes, bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet. He’s still smiling, but he seems a little fidgety now, and Stiles wonders if it’s the cold and maybe he should have refused the hoodie, but before he can say anything- “And I should probably start my run.”

“Yeah, you should… do that.”

“Yeah.”

When he finally gets to the lab, Stiles is as late as he’s ever been, and he gets side-eyes for the rest of the morning and a brand-new stack of papers to read. Somehow, all wrapped up in Derek’s hoodie, he doesn’t mind.

 

 

The next time Stiles sees his _still-100-percent-not-his-landlord_ , Laura is wearing an excessive number of layers and the same radiant grin. She seems genuinely excited to see Stiles, almost like she didn’t expect to run into him at all, which is of course very sweet of her, and it would of course be a perfectly natural reaction, had she not been the one who knocked on his apartment door. (Stiles, of course, is immediately suspicious of her intentions. Weeks later, he would remain firm in his belief that Laura, despite her many qualities, was nosy to a degree far superior than his own, as this kind of conversation would become quite common in their sporadic interactions.)

Stiles, to his credit, has been kind of nailing the adult life for the last couple of months, and he does invite her in.

“So, how are you settling in, Stiles?” Laura asks. Her impossible smile grows even wider, and Stiles is faintly reminded of predators’ teeth.

“Great, actually,” he replies. There’s a look on Laura’s face that says he should elaborate on that, but he decides against it, partly because he is still suspicious of her, and partly because elaborating would just be a whole lot of science-talk, and Derek, and coffee-making, and both experience, and common sense, say Laura would probably disapprove of all options. “Did you actually come by to check on me?”

“Oh, no, of course not. I was over at Derek’s and I thought I’d drop in. Say hi. See how you’re doing.”

“Uh,” Stiles says, unintelligently, because this does strike him as all kinds of odd. Then, because he apparently has no self-control: “So, you visit all your tenants often? Or is it just Derek, and apparently, now me?”

Laura snorts, throwing herself on the couch. “Derek’s not my tenant.”

“Right, right. You mom’s the landlord, not you.”

All he gets in response is a smirk that, again, makes Laura look like she’s plotting his demise or something equally amusing to her evil brain of mischief. Stiles likes mischief, generally, but Laura-level-mischief seems like something else entirely, and very likely to make him look like an idiot.

“Coffee?” Stiles offers, and immediately hides out in the kitchen area without waiting for an answer. He does manage to get the pot brewing before Laura makes an appearance at his side, and for a while, they talk like regular human people. Stiles comments on the neighborhood, Laura comments on the latest film releases, and they bond over a mutual love-hatred relationship with Luc Bresson’s _Valerian_.

Stiles even reconsiders his earlier assessment of Laura, who in his mind is still very much his landlord, but is at least funny and likes cool movies, and maybe they could be friends or something. Of course, that is when Laura goes all evil-eyed again.

“So, how’s your love life, Stiles?”

“What?” And ‘what’ really was the appropriate answer, because one moment they were discussing color schemes in action movie posters, and the next Laura had taken a sudden U-turn at 90 mph. They didn’t exactly crash and die, but Stiles was left very confused regardless.

“Are you seeing anyone?” she pushes.

Again, Stiles is forced to circle back to The Crush™, and how she probably doesn’t need to know about that, at all, ever. He puts a lifetime of being questioned by a father in law enforcement to good use, narrowing his eyes and avoiding the question.

“Is this about my lease? Am I not allowed to bring people over?” he challenges. (He knows the answer, of course, because he might owe the apartment to Lydia, but he did make sure he knew all the terms and conditions before signing the papers. Renting an apartment is not like installing Adobe Flash Player, and anyway, he did read through at least half of those once in his lifetime, which, in retrospect, had been a very useless endeavor.)

“Don’t be silly, of course you are!” Laura’s lips curl into a smirk that makes Stiles feel like they’re high schoolers gossiping on some generic teenager movie. “So, are you? Bringing people over?”

“Just my friend Scott,” he confesses, both truthfully, and pitifully.

“So, you don’t have a girlfriend?” she insists.

“Nope.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Also no.”

“Uh.”

“Are you going to give me an explanation for the sudden interest in my love life, or should I just assume your madly in love with me?” Stiles half-teases. He is pretty sure that Laura’s married, judging by simple gold band on her ring finger, but she’s been probing at him all afternoon, so he should be allowed to do the same.

“You wish,” she jokes back. “Can’t a girl be curious? And here I thought we were becoming friends, Stiles.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re just exploiting me for rent. And for my coffee.”

“It _is_ very good coffee,” Laura agrees.

 

 

October comes and goes, and for the first time in a few years, Stiles isn’t getting black-out drunk on Halloween. It’s a change of pace, but a nice one, because he wakes up early and in a fairly good mood, and decides to make pancakes for breakfast.

The wreaths take him by surprise. There had been no decorations for Halloween, which he didn’t expect anyway, because no one that he’s ever heard of, ever, bothers to decorate their building’s hallway for _anything_ , seeing as it’s not really their job and all. However, the utter lack of any festive trinkets so far means that he’s unprepared when he sees the small wreaths hanging off everyone’s door.

And it’s not like Stiles doesn’t love Christmas, but it’s November first. Christmas is six weeks away, and he never understood the rush to decorate, especially since whoever put these up had to have done so either late at night or in the early hours of the morning, and while their dedication is commendable, Stiles really has to wonder about their mental stability and their hobbies or lack thereof. Still, it’s kind of nice. The wreaths make him feel festive, even if it’s way too early for that, and he’s already in such a good mood that he can’t help but love it. Stiles stands in the hallway for a few seconds before Derek exits his apartment too, his eyes lighting up for a second when he spots the wreaths. He does, however, immediately try to cover it up.

“Please tell me you know who is responsible for this,” Stiles says, trying to steer the conversation in the direction of all things Christmas-y, figuring he might as well match the décor and get in the spirit of the holidays.

Derek shrugs noncommittally, but Stiles doesn’t miss the soft, fond smile.

“Laura does this every year. Early Christmas decorating is kind of her thing.”

“Yeah, she does seem like the type,” Stiles agrees, thinking back to the few conversations he’d had with the acting-landlady so far.

“You know, my younger sister really hates this kind of stuff,” Derek shares, as they walk down the stairs. “The Christmas decorations everywhere, this early in the year. It drives her crazy.”

Stiles is confused and appalled, because no one should dislike Christmas decorating, regardless of whether or not it’s actually Christmas. Christmas is fun and nice and the best excuse to make eggnog and pancakes Stiles ever found.

Derek had been mentioning his sisters for a while now. Stiles wouldn’t admit to it, because he loved his family, but he was maybe, possibly, just a little jealous – from the sound of it, Derek had come from a house full of people and laughter and love. He had funny stories about big Thanksgivings with extended family members whose names he had to relearn every year, and seemed to have more cousins than Stiles thought possible.

“Your family sounds really great, dude.”

“Yeah.” Derek brushes it off, but there’s warmth in his voice too. “There’s a lot of us, though. Mostly we just end up getting in each other’s way. It’s worse when you’re a teenager, to be honest.”

“Maybe,” Stiles concedes. “I wouldn’t know. It was always just me and parents. And then it was just me and my dad, and don’t get me wrong, I love my dad, but… I mean, I guess I have Scott too, and his mom. But it’s not the same.”

Derek doesn’t ask, but the question is hanging from his furrowed brows and his slightly parted lips.

“My mom died when I was twelve.”

“Oh.”

Stiles doesn’t give Derek time to react properly, or to say how sorry he is, because it’s not like Stiles needs that anymore, and he would rather not let the conversation sink into anything less than casual banter, because his landlady has decreed it to be Christmas and Christmas is not a time for negativity or sad feelings.

“It’s fine, you know, you get used to it,” he says instead. “I mean, it’s better now. I went to therapy. My dad went to therapy. Scott also went to therapy, but mostly because he’s a big softy and he was just feeling awful because we were, too.  There was just a lot of therapizing going around, those days.”

So much for keeping keeping it light and cheery.

“That’s good,” Derek finally says. “That you guys… got help. And, you know, are better now.”

“Yeah, definitely helps.”

The silence settles around them, standing on the lobby, unwilling to break the moment. It’s like the other day, when he’d borrowed Derek’s hoodie, except this time the air is a lot heavier and Derek is staring at him like maybe he’s going to say or do something else, and Stiles feels like the proverbial deer caught in very blinding headlights.

A million thoughts chase through his head, but the one Stiles chooses to focus on is the fact that he totally forgot to give Derek back his hoodie, and he’s had it for over a month now, which means he is deliberately keeping the hoodie of a man whose full name he _still_ doesn’t know, and he really should give it back. He doesn’t say anything, though.

“Alright, well,” he manages instead. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” says Derek. “See you tomorrow.”

 

 

Stiles has officially had it with The Crush™.

He is sitting on a corner of the lab, where he can keep his hands off anything volatile, which is most of the stuff anyway, trying to read through some speculative articles and failing miserably, because all he can think about is how frustrating this whole thing with Derek has become. He was fine with them becoming friends, really, but the heavy silences and the staring into each other’s soul is really getting to be too much, and Laura’s obsession with Christmas is starting to drive him crazy.

That morning, as they walked down the stairs, there had been mistletoe on every corridor. It had been frustrating and nearly impossible to avoid. He’d gotten so wired up about it that, as soon as he’d gotten to work, he’d accidentally broken a thank-fuck-still-empty beaker and, considering his track record, his colleagues had forbidden any more lab work for the rest of the day.

Stiles knows that the mistletoe wasn’t hung up for his personal gain, but it’s really hard to put Laura’s seasonal decorating decisions into perspective when Derek keeps giving him looks he can’t read, or that he can’t be sure he’s reading right, in any case. Just that morning, when they’d both walked into the halls positively decked with literal holly, only just missing the _fa la las_ and the children choirs, Derek’s face had looked as constipated and Stiles had ever seen it.

“Our landlady really went all out with the mistletoe, huh?” Stiles chuckled, trying to lighten the mood.

“Yeah,” Derek agreed. “ _That’s Laura_.”

They were awkwardly silent as they descended the stairs, which gave Stiles too much time to ponder on how frustrated and tired and _done with this bullshit_ Derek’s words had sounded just then, and by the time they waved goodbye, Stiles was absolutely convinced that hunk-of-a-neighbor-Derek Something-something wanted nothing to do with him.

 

 

“So… kissed anyone yet?”

This time Laura is calling, instead of randomly showing up at his doorstep, and Stiles isn’t fully convinced that this is an improvement.

“Are you trying to set me up with Meredith?” he asks. “Because I’m pretty sure she’s just using me for my pancakes.” (Meredith had actually come over three times already, and she’d never asked for pancakes, but she’d been very quiet and sullen-looking, looking pointedly in the direction of the stove. Stiles caved in less than five minutes every time, and they always shared a fresh plate of pancakes over TV reruns of _CSI_.)

For once, Stiles is not drinking coffee or in the process of making a new pot. He’d taken a break from work for the night, devoted a full hour to making a Christmas playlist that didn’t feature classical season songs (he always saved those for when it was actually Christmas, and not late November). Instead, when Laura called, he had been listening to a different kind of classic, in the form of No Doubt’s rendition of _Oi to the World_.

“Thanks for spreading the Christmas cheer, though,” he adds, as an after-thought.

“Ugh,” Laura grunts. “And all for nothing. A girl can only do so much.”

“You meddlesome woman, you.”

“Just trying to do right by my little bro,” Laura sighs. The nickname causes Stiles to cringe, because _weird_ , but by now he’s decided that he likes Laura’s meddling ways, so he doesn’t actually mind so much.

“How sweet, Laura,” Stiles teases. “Please don’t call me your brother, you’re already creepy enough as it is.”

Laura scoffs. “Obviously, I did not mean you.”

Stiles does a double take at that. Sure, he’s only been half-listening to the conversation anyway, but they _had been_ talking about him. With the mistletoe, and the setting him up, and Laura being meddlesome and creepy, and the ‘little bro’ comment seemed to go right along with that.

“I’m confused,” he blurts out, after a long silence.

“I meant Derek, you doof.”

 

 

In Stiles’ defense, _he didn’t know Derek’s full name_. This was something he would have to repeat, constantly, in the face of his friends’ mockery, for the next two years (and, more sporadically, through the rest of his life). But, right now, Stiles didn’t know this. All he knew was that Derek was Laura’s sister, and she’d apparently been trying to set them up, and the amount of mistletoe hanging over the short walk from his door to Derek’s (which had probably cost a small fortune) should have been clue enough for that last bit.

It had been two days since the call with Laura and Stiles remained confused. He briefly considered following his usual MO of ignoring things until they went away, but quickly realized this one thing _wouldn’t_ go away unless he moved or suddenly took to ignoring Derek, which would be impossible because Derek was just great, okay, and also because by now they were kind of friends and you don’t just suddenly dump friends because their sisters are trying to set you up with them, especially when you kind of want to be set up with them as well. Instead, Stiles makes some pancakes and strides across the hall. He knocks on Derek’s door: three loud, rapid knocks that echo in the hallway, which he immediately regrets.

Derek opens the door and smiles.

“Hi, Stiles,” he says, like everything is peachy, just fine, A-OK. “Do I finally have the honor of getting some pancakes? Meredith has been very vocal about them. I feel like I’m missing out.”

“Yeah,” Stiles blurts out. “No. I mean, not yet.”

“Oh?”

“Laura’s your sister.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” Derek points out. “I _have_ lived with her for most of my life, so I’m very painfully aware.”

“She’s been trying to set us up.”

Stiles hadn’t really noticed until now, but Derek’s eyebrows were _very_ expressive. They were the kind of eyebrows that greeted acquaintances when they passed by them in the morning, and shook with laughter at videos of cute dogs falling on their butts. At that moment, Stiles could swear they were doing somersaults, forwards and backwards and sideways, skipping from surprise to guilt to a myriad of other expressions, too fleeting for him to identify. Finally, they settled in a grimace.

“ _Fucking Laura_ ,” Derek says, running a hand through his face, like he was trying to pull the awkwardness out of his face, but only managing to look even more distressed. “I’m so sorry, Stiles.”

“You are?” Stiles mumbles, immediately deciding that this day marks the official end of The Crush™ and that it couldn’t be too hard to find a new apartment, with isolated windows and a nice view of the city and a spacious kitchen. He’d thought, _maybe_ , that they’d kind of been flirting, but it’s not like Stiles is the least self-absorbed person he knows, and maybe he’d just been reading it all wrong, and boy, did _that_ suck.

Derek, however, doesn’t hear him speak. It would have been hard to, anyway, because Stiles’s voice is barely louder than a breath, and anyway, in a very uncharacteristic moment, Derek immediately launches into a stream-of-consciousness monologue that has Stiles wondering if perhaps he’s been rubbing off on Derek.

“ _This is so bad, fuck–_ I may have told Laura a couple months back that I thought you were kind of cute? And I didn’t really mean anything by it, but she just kept assuming things and– I mean, I kind of figured out she was doing it a while back, but I figured if I just ignored it she would stop, and then we could avoid this exact conversation.” Derek takes a deep breath. “I should have made her stop, I really am sorry, Stiles.”

And that was only marginally better than what Stiles had guessed, but it’s enough to give him the push to ask: “So, you’re _not_ into me?”

Derek hesitates, looking for all the world like he’s about to admit to having killed Stiles’s dog.

“No, I am. I definitely am,” he says, almost cringing. “I’m sorry if that makes things weird between us.”

“ _Oh_. Oh.”

It feels like the moment when somebody slaps you out of the blue, and for a split second, the world is spinning so fast that you feel like you’ve just leaped in space and time, except there’s a lot less pain, and instead of leaping, Stiles is floating, hovering above the floorboards, practically bumping his nose against Laura’s ridiculous, excessive mistletoe. It’s just _nice_ , and exciting, and Stiles practically has to force himself not to giggle. Derek, on his end, looks like he’s about to retreat back into his apartment, close the door, and plunge into a hole headed straight for the center of the Earth.

Stiles makes it his mission to stop him. ASAP.

“You’re such a fucking idiot,” Stiles groans. “Hold this.”

Stiles practically thrusts the plate of pancakes against Derek’s chest, and the green-eyed, absolutely-gorgeous, stupid-oh-so-fucking-stupid, best-fucking-neighbor-in-history-of-apartment-buildings, just barely manages to take hold of it. Stiles doesn’t even take a second look at his face– he just holds it with both hands and plants his lips against Derek’s.

It’s weird, at first, because Derek is just standing there, like a very realistic Ancient Greek statue. Stiles can _feel_ the moment Derek’s brain catches up with him, because he inhales sharply and suddenly his lips are moving against Stiles’ and – _oh._

Kissing Derek is like that moment before, with the hovering and the excitement, except they’re floating together, and Derek’s stubble scratches playfully against Stiles’ chin, and Derek’s lips are warm, and soft, and somehow Derek makes the plate disappear from between them and they’re flush against each other, and Stiles is convinced that if he opens his eyes, there’ll be snow and twinkling lights and mistletoe all around them.

He’s only right about the mistletoe, but it feels just as magical.

“C’mon,” Stiles says, smirking, when they finally part. Derek’s eyes are shining, and his eyebrows are doing somersaults again. “Let’s go inside. There's pancakes to eat.”

 

 

In a way, Scott was right. The pancakes _kind of_ did the trick.

They shared them over a silly Christmas movie they both completely forgot about, too focused on each other and this new _thing_ between them, on Stiles’ long fingers wrapped around Derek’s steady, calloused hand, on warm and soft and happy, and by the end of the day, they were already halfway in love.


End file.
